Funding boost for Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
20 December 2005
Major new funding for the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute totalling £340 million has been made by the Trust to support the Institute in the search for vital disease information.
A world leader in DNA sequencing and analysis, the Institute plays a major role in important national and international partnerships, including the HapMap Project of human variation and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, which will define the genetic underpinning of eight common diseases.
The new funding will also help the Institute's successful Cancer Genome Project focus on three cancer types – breast, lung and kidney – to try to identify the majority of mutations involved in disease development. Outline studies will be carried out on 1000 other cancer samples.
Infectious disease is a massive health problem for developing countries. New programmes at the Institute will combine research on disease-causing organisms with studies of host resistance. Examples proposed include typhoid fever and malaria, in projects that exemplify integration of research between disciplines, a key aspect of the new plan.
Meanwhile, in collaboration with researchers from the UK and around the world, the Institute will examine the genetic foundation of diabetes and obesity.
Using its unique combination of skills in computer analysis, DNA sequencing, studies of DNA variation, antibody production and analysis of gene activity in cells and model organisms, the Institute aims to release the fruits of all research rapidly to the research community.
See also
- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
- HapMap Consortium publishes landmark human genetic variation catalogue (News: 27 October 2005)
- Researchers set to find ‘genetic signposts’ for eight diseases (News: 28 September 2005)